Other National Parks Archives - Steve Jones Great Blue Heron

Nature Healing the Scars of Chickamauga National Memorial Park

July 7, 2021/in Memorials, Monuments, Nature's Inspiration, Other National Parks /by Steve Jones

April 25, 2021, we visited Chickamauga National Military Park (NW Georgia, south of Chattanooga, TN) with our two Alabama grandsons. My purpose with this Post is to reflect upon the tremendous restorative power of Nature. The official National Park Service brochure tells the tale of the three days of terror.

War ravaged these Appalachian foothill ridges and valleys in northwest Georgia, just 120 miles from my residence, for three days 158 years ago in September 1863. The clash along Chickamauga Creek engaged 125,000 combatants. Nearly 4,000 men perished; the wounded totaled 24,000. More than 6,000 captured or missing. The opposing armies met during the struggle for control of Chattanooga, a critical transportation hub important to both Union and Confederate forces. Search the web for more information about the battle and the broader War Between the States.

The bloody three-day battle ravaged the land (and opposing armies) in that southern Appalachian foothill country. The setting now is pastoral…mixed open meadow and forest. Aside from battlefield monuments, signage, and cannons, the land looks pristine…untouched. Yet, 158 years ago the site saw the full fury of military might. The rehabilitation over the initial 27 years included cleaning up the mess, salvaging damaged materiel and equipment, and resuming some agricultural practices. Congress designated the site a National Military Park in 1890. Since then, Nature has conducted her own healing and recovery. I mention this only to say time and Nature heal most wounds and insults to the environment.

I will focus on Nature’s healing and offer photos and an ecologist’s reflections on what I saw and felt April 26, 2021 touring Chickamauga National Military Park with Judy, Jack, and Sam. Importantly, I grew up less than 100 miles from Gettysburg, Antietam, and Manassas Battlefields. Like Chickamauga, those famous battlefields are maintained by the National Park Service. And they, too, express Nature’s natural healing from gross abuse.

Today, Chickamauga’s pastoral vistas (left) and deep forest (right) belie the unfathomable violence that swept across the landscape. Acts of heroism, valor, and sacrifice marked the ferocious fighting. Men paid the ultimate price to either defend the South or preserve the union. That battle, the war itself, and the causes leading to succession and ultimate healing are written in history…a history we cannot and should not undo or rewrite. Humanity must learn from the past, and launch into the future. Despite the blemishes, we remain the bright light among nations on Earth, a USA attracting record numbers of wanna-be citizens to our borders. I remind you that today’s flow of humans is one-way. I hear nothing about an exodus from the US. One point of attraction, I suppose, is that while we memorialize all who died in our Civil War, we do so in beautiful Military Park settings. We don’t glorify the brutal war. Instead, we recognize that we can complement healing the nation’s soul by creating magnificent Parks to honor the casualties and help set our nation’s course into the deep future, far beyond this century and a half.

The Wilder Brigade Monument Tower stand at the southern end of the Park. We climbed the 85-feet to gain perspective. Today’s beauty contrasts to the 1863 photographs that show shattered trees, broken and battered materiel, cannon emplacements, and raw earth.

As I viewed the forest from above, I wondered whether any of today’s trees had witnessed the savaging. As I further explored at ground level, I found no trees that stood out as older than 150 years. I pondered, too, whether the cirrus-laced blue of our late April sky was similar to the firmament above the smoke-filled fields and woods of September 1863. How out of character such a peaceful sky would have been.

Perhaps something more in line with the raging fury would have been these two images I snapped from approaching storms last summer here in north Alabama.

Standing atop the tower, I snapped this photo of a loblolly pine at my eye-level…let’s call it a 90-foot tall tree. Loblolly grows fast in our climate. I can’t imagine this individual being much older than 65 years. Perhaps its grandmother absorbed lead and blasts during that long-ago September period.

Sam posed beside a gnarled tree just 30-feet from a deep-woods monument indicating the position of some battle unit. A war-scarred survivor just scraping by for 16 decades? I doubt it. I’ve seen hundreds of such odd tree forms throughout our regional forests. Nature’s treatments of wind, lightning, ice, and toppling neighbors exact a continuing toll. So, nothing to suggest that this tree suffered Civil War injury.

These forests look just like most other second- and third-growth stands I’ve explored, except that the trail (right) leads downhill to two cannon emplacements. I long ago concluded that Nature cares little, if at all, about human influences and imposed disturbances, which Nature matches with her own tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanoes, wildfires, floods, etc. She knows perturbations.

Yes, I know that the battlefield soil still carries the residue of those three days. A Park Ranger told me that they have catalogued untold numbers of mini-balls and metal fragments. Similarly, I’ve walked alluvial fields from Virginia south through the Carolinas, Georgia, and Alabama and found arrowheads, chips from tool-making, and Native American pottery shards aplenty. Whether from hunting and gathering, routine living, or horrendous battles, we humans leave the debris of our living behind. I believe the boys enjoyed our Chickamauga venture, even as they felt the horror of the battle. The interpretive museum and movie told the tale effectively and honestly. History, like Nature, is best understood and appreciated on the ground. Although a replica, the log building representing a home on the site that served as a field hospital, a nexus of where men died in care, field surgeons removed limbs, and terrifying sounds and sights filled the hours.

We can learn from history and Nature only if we accept the facts, parse the lessons, and consider all dimensions from beauty and magic to horror and terror. I’ll close this discussion with the white oak that stands majestically near the log building. To me it symbolizes the restorative and healing powers of Nature. I wonder whether during the dark of night it feels ancient echoes of musket fire, cannons roaring, and explosions.

In some ways, we naturalists and historians share the task of bringing the past to life… so that we might discover and translate lessons for life and living into the future. I have written often that every parcel of forestland has a tale to tell. I strive to read every forested landscape that I enter.

Thoughts and Reflections

I offer these reflections:

Nature is proficient at healing all wounds, whether human inflicted or natural.
Our National Military Parks complement healing the nation’s soul by creating magnificent parklands.
Human and natural history intersect in ways that stir the spirit within us.

Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2021 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

Another Note: If you came to this post via a Facebook posting or by an another route, please sign up now (no cost… no obligation) to receive my Blog Post email alerts: http://eepurl.com/cKLJdL

And a Third: I am available for Nature-Inspired Speaking, Writing, and Consulting — contact me at steve.jones.0524@gmail.com

Reminder of my Personal and Professional Purpose, Passion, and Cause

If only more of us viewed our precious environment through the filters I employ. If only my mission and vision could be multiplied untold orders of magnitude:

Mission: Employ writing and speaking to educate, inspire, and enable readers and listeners to understand, appreciate, and enjoy Nature… and accept and practice Earth Stewardship.

Vision:

People of all ages will pay greater attention to and engage more regularly with Nature… and will accept and practice informed and responsible Earth Stewardship.
They will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

Tagline/Motto: Steve (Great Blue Heron) encourages and seeks a better tomorrow through Nature-Inspired Living!

Steve’s Three Books

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), and Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit) to encourage all citizens to recognize and appreciate that every lesson for living, learning, serving, and leading is either written indelibly in or is powerfully inspired by Nature.

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

I love hiking and exploring in Nature
I see images I want to (and do) capture with my trusty iPhone camera
I enjoy explaining those images — an educator at heart
I don’t play golf!
I actually do love writing — it’s the hobby I never needed when my career consumed me
Judy suggested my writing is in large measure my legacy to our two kids, our five grand kids, and all the unborn generations beyond
And finally, perhaps my books and Blogs could reach beyond family and touch a few other lives… sow some seeds for the future

All three of my books (Nature Based Leadership; Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading; Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) present compilations of personal experiences expressing my (and co-author Dr. Wilhoit for Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) deep passion for Nature. All three books offer observations and reflections on my relationship to the natural world… and the broader implications for society. Order any and all from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.

My Edu Alliance Journal Article on Academic Leadership

March 1, 2020/in Other National Parks, Workshops /by Steve Jones

I issue weekly (more or less) GBH Blog Posts on Nature-Inspired Life and Living. However, I still dabble in the arena where I operated for two decades prior to retiring: Higher Education Leadership. I conducted an August 2019 Academic Leadership workshop for VPs, Deans, Directors, and Chairs at Kimep University in Almaty, Kazakhstan. I developed an article, Best Practices — My Trip to Kazakhstan Confirmed Academic Leadership Principles are Global, published February 24, 2020 in Edu Alliance Journal.

Here is the link to the journal article: https://edualliancegroup.blog/2020/02/24/best-practices-my-trip-to-kazakhstan-confirmed-academic-leadership-principles-are-global/

You may recall that I published two GBH Posts from my associated visit to three Kazakhstan National Parks:

https://stevejonesgbh.com/2019/09/10/three-national-parks-in-kazakhstan-an-august-immersion/
https://stevejonesgbh.com/2019/10/08/eleven-time-zones-apart-yet-oh-so-familiar/

I will never forget my visit with faculty, staff, and administrators at Kimep University and my tour of the three Parks. I found the experience enriching in many dimensions. I’ll transition to my Summary Reflections from the article with three photos from the spectacular Kolsai Lakes National Park in Kazakhstan’s Tian Shan Mountains.

Summary Reflections

From the article:

I accepted my Kimep University assignment with trepidation, to no small extent fearing that I could offer little to a university in a country I had never visited. Yet, I found fulfillment, exhilaration, and satisfaction in my week on-site. My experience in US-based academic leadership prepared me well for my Central Asia venture. I hope in retrospect that I offered as much as I learned. I am convinced that Kimep is in good senior executive hands. I urged the senior team to accept and embrace the identified strategic imperatives. I’d welcome a chance to return in 2021 to monitor progress and offer continued assistance.

I learned that Kimep University and the institutions of my immediate experience are far more alike than different. All aspire to survive and thrive. All are constrained or empowered by the same basic imperatives. No other factor in the future equation for sustained success (or ultimate failure) is weighted more heavily than leadership.

As universities here in the US (or globally) deal with turbulent seas, these same leadership principles and strategic imperatives will determine, in large part, whether the institution sinks, frantically treads water, or sails smoothly forward. Some will submerge; others will continue flailing. Those with competent leaders have the best chance of hoisting the sails, catching the breeze, and making it to the desired port. Competent leaders are those who embrace these core principles and pursue strategic imperatives… as they work closely with faculty, staff, students, and stakeholders.

Reminder of my Personal and Professional Purpose, Passion, and Cause

If only more of us viewed our precious environment through the filters I employ. If only my mission and vision could be multiplied untold orders of magnitude:

Mission: Employ writing and speaking to educate, inspire, and enable readers and listeners to understand, appreciate, and enjoy Nature… and accept and practice Earth Stewardship.

Vision:

People of all ages will pay greater attention to and engage more regularly with Nature… and will accept and practice informed and responsible Earth Stewardship.
They will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

Tagline/Motto: Steve (Great Blue Heron) encourages and seeks a better tomorrow through Nature-Inspired Living!

Steve’s Three Books

Nature Based Leadership, my first book, contends that every lesson for leading, living, serving, and learning is either written indelibly in or is compelling inspired by Nature. With Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading, I extend my lessons to elements of life and living beyond leadership. I based both books on my own palpable experiences in Nature and the leadership positions I’ve held over a fulfilling career in higher education and the paper and allied products manufacturing industry.

At the Nexus of Human and Natural History: Paw Paw Tunnel

December 23, 2019/in Nature's Inspiration, Other National Parks /by Steve Jones

C&O Canal National Historical Park

I issued multiple Posts this past summer and fall from July visits to National Parks, Monuments, and Memorials in Utah, Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota. Add in two more Posts from visiting three National Parks in Kazakhstan. November 20, 2019 I published yet another, this one from a September visit to the C&O Canal National Historical Park. I now post another from visiting the C&O Canal National Historical Park: I offer a few photos and reflections from stopping by the western terminus at Cumberland, Maryland, my home town, and then enjoying an extend hike through the Paw Paw Tunnel and back over its Tunnel Hill Trail. As is my Blog Post pattern, I will focus on Nature, and weave through the essay observations on the interplay of human and natural history.

The Canal’s Western Terminus

I’ll begin with a view of Cumberland from my September visit. The original Canal planning brought the Canal to this point, and then built it up and over the Allegany front and onward to the Ohio River. Cumberland became its final destination after the enterprise met overwhelming competition from the railroads and ultimately succumbed to brutal flooding from the adjacent Potomac River in 1924.

I snapped this terminus visitor’s center wall mural photograph (below), taken during the Canal’s peak operations well before 1924. The view looks east over the terminus operations, including two canal boats, loading and unloading docks, and a lone mule. The hills beyond rise a couple of hundred feet above the canal level. I grew up perhaps a quarter mile to the south (right) where the hills softened. The high school I attended, built in the mid 1930s, now sits beyond the unidentifiable building top-center in the dip above the center casks. I played in those hills, which we then called “The Clay Hills.” The image below depicts the hills as scarred and denuded, likely cut repeatedly for firewood, and perhaps even stripped for aggregate and clay to support residential and commercial development in the growing city. I knew explicitly and intuitively as a youth that the land had been abused. Prior to any formal forestry and natural resources education and training, I observed that the terrain evidenced deep erosion gullies. I recognized that such treatment of our Earth was hurtful and probably irreparable. In my youth, shrub-cover had begun to colonize the hills, yet exposed red “soil” dominated the appearance. The shrubs had not fully captured the hillside. I can recall only that sumac (Rhus typhina) and tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima) dominated the emerging vegetation.

I took the photo below from roughly the same spot looking east at least a hundred years later (November 2019). My high school is visible beyond that same dip as a flat-topped building with its smoke stack rising midway. The approximately 1.5-mile distance belies the school’s size, a large three-story school. The Clay Hills now sprout a few homes and an emerging forest. The raw red “soil” is no longer visible. Examining the photo, I now have a desire to venture into those once-denuded hills to assess progress of recovery.

I have observed often in these Posts that nothing in Nature is static. Even Clay Hills revert with time and protection to forest. Nature heals all human induced scars. I first saw the Clay Hills as a raw wound, apparent even to a kid. Interestingly, if I assume I first ventured into the hills at age eight, I’ve watched the recovery for 60 years. No telling how many years more I will visit. Were I able, I would return every decade for the next millennium… and beyond. I can instead enjoy the conjecture. I visualize a forest eventually prospering in the naturally rejuvenated soil. Will that forest prosper before humanity fades and disappears, sadly from self-inflicted wounds, or will we humans awaken and live harmoniously as informed and responsible Earth citizens? Let’s hope the latter.

Paw Paw Tunnel

Over those six decades I’ve spent countless hours exploring Paw Paw Tunnel and environs, located near milepost 155.2, 29 Canal-miles east of Cumberland. We camped often near the tunnel, fished in the Potomac, and hiked in the forest. From a National Park Service online source about the tunnel:

14 years of construction.

Over $600,000 spent.

6 million bricks used.

3,118 feet long

Those are just a few of the staggering statistics of the greatest engineering marvel along the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park. Located at milepost 155.2, the Paw Paw Tunnel helped eliminate 6 miles of canal and opened up economic success for Cumberland, Maryland. However, completing the Paw Paw Tunnel was not an easy task. Through labor strikes, money issues, and illness, the construction of the 3,118 foot long tunnel took nearly 14 years to complete and was placed well over budget. Today, when you plan your visit to the Paw Paw Tunnel, bring a flashlight and discover the weep holes, rope burns, rub rails, as well as brass plates that bring the tunnel’s history to life. Following your travels through the tunnel, enjoy the two-mile long Tunnel Hill Trail where you can discover breathtaking views of the Paw Paw Bends.

The interpretive signage (below left) shows the tunnel route and describes avoiding the six miles of sweeping bends along the Potomac. Lower right the tunnel’s western (Cumberland) end beckoned me in mid-November.

A hundred feet inside the western entrance, I caught the view out of the tunnel. Combining the light entering from behind me and employing a three-second exposure, I exalted in how well I captured the tunnel interior and the far eastern end. Some of what appears well-illuminated actually stands in pitch blackness. Mid-way, except for the “light at the end of the tunnel,” I could not see my hand in front of my face. Engineers and workers completed the tunnel in 1850, 14 years after the initial pick blows and dynamiting. As I strolled through the tunnel and returned over the Hill Trail, I marveled at the construction technique: coming in from both ends, dropping twice vertically to tunnel level and working all four of those internal faces! Imagine those immigrant laborers who arose early morning, hiked up to one of the shafts, and lowered to excavation-level where they performed heavy and dangerous tasks… for 14 years!

The tunnel exited east into a deep cut that extends for another half-mile, connecting again to the Potomac a half-mile beyond that. The snow-coated boardwalk offered a pleasant complement to the clear blue sky. I felt deep sentiment revisiting a stretch I had walked scores of times as a boy, then as an adult whenever trips home gave me an opportunity to renew that Central Appalachian spirit of my life. I wish I could remember the last time I hiked the tunnel with my Dad. His memory and his essence accompanied me even on this most recent pass nearly 25 years after his death. We do communicate on such treks, but it’s just not the same.

He long ago impressed upon me the importance of paying attention to little things in Nature. A row of icicles along a small ledge. Or the engineering beauty of a long-abandoned lock east of the long cut. I recall standing with him, or sitting on the exquisite stonework, trying to re-imagine the lift-lock in operation. Dad’s spirit and the ghosts of thousands watched silently with me that cold and sunny morning.

I turned back when I reached the Potomac, six river miles from where I entered the tunnel, some 1.7 towpath miles behind. About to re-enter the cut (below left), I left the canal and began the Tunnel Hill Trail, a path I had taken dozens of times. The Trail presents a strenuous hike for those not accustomed to physical challenge. As I reflected on my ventures with Dad, I paused to wonder how many more times I will make the trek. Once I am gone, will my spirit haunt these hills? What difference will these musings have made?

On a more positive note, I know that my writing soothes me, lifts my spirit, and adds value to my own life. I welcome and treasure these reflective hikes into memory…into special places that I have long treasured and that shaped my life.

Human and Natural History Interacting on the Tunnel Hill Trail

The National Park Service tells the Paw Paw Tunnel stories quite well… with interpretive signage, publications, and online information. I won’t recite the signage for you. My intent through this section is to comment on the natural history I observed along the trail and with my photos. Think about the tremendous volume of rock excavated during construction from both ends and brought up through the vertical shafts. Those resultant debris piles (spoils) are dry and infertile. I like the thick lichen cushion nestling a long-dead, weathered Virginia pine (Pinus virginiana) stump-remnant below right.

Although the trail passes through “wildness,” signage reminds us that this particular spot once supported a community and its schoolhouse. I listened in vain for the ancient echoes of children playing. Nature is sweeping away most direct evidence.

I wonder what Park Serve archeologists discovered at this former construction village. Nature doesn’t care… intent upon reclaiming what is hers.

Again, massive amounts of spoil now fill many ravines and coves along the Trail. The photo lower right shows spoil to a depth of nearly fifty feet. To the casual observer, without benefit of the sign, the land tells no tales. I am fortunate to know Nature’s language well enough to interpret her stories. Her shelves hold many volumes, each one written in forest and landscape evidence. Man has never left a mark that will survive time and Nature’s incessant healing.

Picture the lower left wagon trail 165 years ago running along the base of a denuded hillside, stripped repeatedly for firewood to fuel cooking stoves and warm winter quarters. Imagine wagons loaded with spoil heading down to dumping grounds; carts forwarding workers and supplies up to the shafts; and exhausted laborers clinging to the cart rails returning to camp after their daily shift. What I don’t know is whether the crews worked during the night. Daylight or dark would make no difference for those working the four internal tunnel-level excavation faces. The snow-dusted Tunnel Hill Trail, to those not privy to the 14-year construction struggle, appears now as merely a sheltered footpath leading through the wildness of Sorrel Ridge, part of Maryland’s 46,560-acre Green Ridge State Forest (GR SF). Another sentimental connection for me is that I worked my junior summer as a forestry aide on GR SF, a dream job!

I view this as another glimpse of the magic synergy between human and natural history, and my own intersection with it. I can recall no untouched forestland (virgin forest) on Green Ridge State Forest, neither from my summer employment there or from my reading of Land of the Living: The Story of Green Ridge Forest (1996), authored by my summer-of-1972 boss, Green Ridge Forest Supervisor John Mash. In his Preface, John wrote, “When I first came to the Green Ridge Forest in 1971 as a young forester I soon became aware that others preceded me. One of the things I learned in forestry school was that the past influences the present and that there was evidence of many past disturbances in the forest.” John’s 875 pages tell the stories of Green Ridge Forest eloquently with great passion. Again in his Preface he said, “The proper way to read this book is lying on a hammock in the forest, listening to the birds and imagining what happened on the very spot you lounge. You were not the first there to experience the sights, sounds, joys, wonders and sorrows of the Green Ridge mystique.”

As I hiked the Trail (below left) on that gorgeous November morning, I thought of John, who loved the entire Green Ridge Forest and all life within it, present and past. John died far too young. I would love to have accompanied him over the Tunnel Hill Trail. We spent a lot of time together that summer. I marveled at his sharp eyes in spotting rattlesnakes and his never-failing intent upon picking them up, examining each one, and gently releasing it where he found it. He likewise studied the signs of past disturbance religiously, always alerting me to faint trail traces, evidence of past timber cutting, old foundations, and settlement relics. I visualized John stretched on his hammock between two oaks that morning. He tipped his forester’s hat, twirled his handlebar mustache, and wished me well.

The hike over Sorrel Ridge offers ample reward for the exertion. The central Appalachians likewise reward me with deep feelings of home. I’ve stood at scenic overlooks across the US and even at a number of places internationally. I never fail to appreciate the beauty, magic, wonder, and awe of elevated perspective, yet nothing surpasses the scenic, emotional, and sentimental elixir of what I will always consider home. I suppose the echoes of youth across time magnify my appreciation. I am sure I was adolescent the first time I stood at this overlook. How much of what I now see is modified through the filters of life, memory, and education? I believe earnestly that what I now see far exceeds the simple image I enjoyed 55 years ago at age 13!

I snapped a selfie to make sure that it was old Steve up there on the trail. Sure enough, I had not passed through some time warp! I wanted a photo with the hilltop sparsely-stocked oak stand behind me (below left), and another with the Virginia pine overhead (below right) as I enjoyed a well-traveled bagel with peanut butter. I now confess to failing to pay enough attention to my surroundings. The lower right photo shows beyond a doubt that the pine behind me is recently dead, its crown reddish-brown, having given up the ghost during the summer. How could I have missed it? Blinded by the vista? I who pride myself in seeing far more in Nature than most! Nature offers unlimited inspiration and humility.

I know my missing the obvious has nothing to do with my age. After all, how could an old guy have just traversed a trail that carries the warning statement, “Danger. Steep cliffs and loose footing. One misstep could result in serious injury or a life threatening situation.” Perhaps I was so focused on the danger I faced to note that the pine was dead! No, I shall not shamelessly reach for excuses. Quite simply, I missed the obvious, and “saw” it only after examining the photo that evening.

As I’ve observed many times, nothing in Nature is static. Witness the now-dead pine. Recall the recovering Clay Hills in Cumberland.

Life marches on in this Land of the Living — Green Ridge Forest, the C&O Canal, and the Paw Paw Tunnel. John Mash’s simple book Dedication fittingly closes this Great Blue Heron Blog Post:

This book is dedicated to all those souls, known but to God, who lie forever in so many places in the unmarked forest graves. They have nourished the soil with their bodies and in turn live in the trees and plants that feed the wild animals. Although no one knows of their earthly joys and sorrows, they will be a part of the forest forever.

Thoughts and Reflections

Here are the three succinct truths I draw from this Blog Post:

Nature, with the help of a National Historical Park designation, inexorably reclaims what humanity once cleared and domesticated.
Human-scale time has no meaning to a river, nor to the mountains within which it courses.
“The National Park Service preserves unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the national park system for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations.” The C&O National Historical Park is no less a part of our heritage than Yellowstone or Yosemite.

Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire and Reward you!

Note: All blog post images created & photographed by Stephen B. Jones unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: “©2019 Steve Jones, Great Blue Heron LLC. All Rights Reserved.”

Another Note: If you came to this post via a Facebook posting or by an another route, please sign up now (no cost… no obligation) to receive my Blog Post email alerts: https://stevejonesgbh.com/contact/

And a Third: I am available for Nature-Inspired Speaking, Writing, and Consulting — contact me at steve.jones.0524@gmail.com

Reminder of my Personal and Professional Purpose, Passion, and Cause

If only more of us viewed our precious environment through the filters I employ. If only my mission and vision could be multiplied untold orders of magnitude:

Mission: Employ writing and speaking to educate, inspire, and enable readers and listeners to understand, appreciate, and enjoy Nature… and accept and practice Earth Stewardship.

Vision:

People of all ages will pay greater attention to and engage more regularly with Nature… and will accept and practice informed and responsible Earth Stewardship.
They will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

Tagline/Motto: Steve (Great Blue Heron) encourages and seeks a better tomorrow through Nature-Inspired Living!

Steve’s Three Books

As with my weekly Blog Posts, I weave Nature’s thread through the essays within my books. I reflect on my own life experiences in Nature and their relevance to my life and living. I try to have a little fun, mostly at my own expense. I take what I do very seriously, yet I don’t take (and never have) myself too seriously (see me lower right working feverishly on my writing!).

Actual time in Nature stimulates my reflections, fuels my passion, and provides fodder for my essays. I occasionally treat my books to walks in the forest (see below).

All three of my books (Nature Based Leadership; Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading; Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) present compilations of personal experiences expressing my (and co-author Dr. Wilhoit for Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) deep passion for Nature. The books inspire deeper relationship with and care for our One Earth. Order any and all from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.

Healing from Landscape Devastation and Human Tragedy: Flight 93 National Memorial

December 9, 2019/in Nature's Inspiration, Other National Parks, Steve's Books /by Steve Jones

Flight 93 National Memorial

Few of us alive September 11, 2001 will forget that day of terrifying destruction — a country literally under attack by ruthless human monsters… a horrid sub species intent upon violence and terror. One of the four hijacked planes fell to Earth some forty air miles from my birth home. Traveling mid-November from Cumberland, MD to visit our son and his family north of Pittsburgh, we detoured to the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, PA. A day fittingly gray and cold, matching the mood of place and the events that culminated on the site.

Like the many National Parks, Memorials, and Monuments I’ve visited, this one rose to the occasion, capturing that fateful day with appropriate solemnity, honoring those who died in defiance of the brutal terrorists, and memorializing this land that will live on forever with absolute respect for the heroes who gave their last full measure here. I do not strive to repeat the story nor describe the structures and interpretation. I give very high marks to all that the National Park Service has generated on-site and online. Instead, I will offer some reflection through a different lens… my naturalist and applied ecologist’s filters.

I include Memorial photos only as a context within which to observe and reflect. Take my word, the Memorial is hauntingly beautiful and majestic. Yet there are ironies I will introduce to you. I grew up and am growing old loving this Allegheny Front region of Pennsylvania and Maryland. This highland (2,400-3,000 feet) lies just west of the eastern continental divide. Summers are generally pleasant; winters are harsh. Snowfall averages more than 100-inches annually. I worked my freshman and sophomore summers just south of this Pennsylvania location in Maryland doing forest inventory on Savage River State Forest. I considered it heaven.

I clearly remember a likewise nationally significant 1964 plane crash in this same area, encompassing Savage River State Forest. From a 2014 AP online article recalling the crash of the nuclear-armed (two bombs) B-52:

“The storm-driven crash of a nuclear bomber in western Maryland in 1964 made an indelible impact on the Cold War program that put the crew and public at risk.

Fifty years later, Operation Chrome Dome is nearly forgotten, but memories of the crash on Big Savage Mountain remain painfully fresh among the crew members’ families and the rural Appalachian residents who helped recover the bodies.

Gary Finzel, 69, said his overnight trek through hip-deep snow with five others to recover the frozen remains of Air Force Maj. Robert Lee Payne was the worst night of his life.

“I can see him sitting there on his hunkers on the banks” of Poplar Lick, Finzel said Tuesday. “I still see him the same as if it was yesterday.”

The accident on Jan. 13, 1964, is memorialized by stone markers in tiny Grantsville, about 140 miles west of Baltimore, and at the spots where three of the five crew members died. Payne succumbed to exposure in the Savage River State Forest after ejecting from the crippled B-52. Bombardier Maj. Robert Townley’s remains were found in the wreckage on adjacent private land. The tail gunner, Tech Sgt. Melvin F. Wooten, bailed out and died from exposure and injuries near Salisbury, Pa., nearly 15 miles north of the crash site.

The pilot, Maj. Thomas W. McCormick, and co-pilot Capt. Parker C. “Mack” Peedin ejected and survived. Neither is still living.”

I can close my eyes and see the Cumberland, MD (my hometown) airport, serving in real time as base for search, rescue, and recovery operations. I was 12-and-a-half years old. Dad and I spent many hours over several days at the airport watching twin-rotor military choppers ferrying people, equipment, and wreckage in and out, great blasts of rotor-driven snow rising with each arrival and departure. I recall the actual storm, fierce even in the valley Cumberland occupies, yet raging at full-blizzard intensity in the higher elevation crash zone.

Flight 93 crashed just 26 miles from where Tech Sgt Wooten died. The SAC Bomber succumbed to weather, mechanical failure, and perhaps an ill-advised decision to fly over the mountains that night. Again, from AP: “A heavily redacted Air Force report on the accident attributes the crash to a bulkhead structural failure that caused the vertical fin to separate from the plane during weather-related turbulence.”

In sharp contrast, it was pure evil that brought Flight 93 to its demise. Pure evil combated and overcome in-air by American citizen-heroes (passengers) who forced the hand of the terrorists, preventing them from using the jetliner as yet another hostile missile aimed at our Nation’s Capital. Memories of both incidents will haunt me the remainder of my days. One a searing nightmare that now lies raw and fresh on my and in our national psyche. The other a vivid memory of an adventure that my Dad and I shared, certainly a disaster that took five crew lives, yet still a lesson in the power and fury of Nature. A ferocious storm interacting with a dangerous time for humanity… a world poised at the cusp of nuclear holocaust. I know that Dad understood the nuclear war implications. I suspect I focused more on the weather elements coupled with the excitement of a major search, rescue, and recovery operation, still mostly enjoying a time of personal innocence and geopolitical ignorance.

There was nothing innocent about Flight 93. The evil scum who perpetrated this act of terror left little room for doubting their vile madness. Yes, I admit to harboring echoes of anger, fury, and resentment as I toured the site and experienced the exhibits. Also sadness and tears. I listened, eyes welling, to messages left by three passengers on their home phones, saying farewell to loved ones.

Lower left looks back along the flight path of the inbound doomed plane. The lower right view is along the final flight path toward the impact site a half-mile distant. Despite the horror and sadness of the day, the Memorial beautifully expresses a prevailing sentiment of beauty, inspiration, hope, and human goodness, valor, and decency. The haloed sun lower right expresses visually, emotionally, and spiritually far more than I can offer with words.

Healing from Landscape Devastation and Human Tragedy

Here’s where I take a side track. I love the banner at the observation point of the flight path walkway: A Common Field One Day; A Field of Honor Forever. Beyond that banner, the plane crashed into our Mother Earth at a nearly vertical pitch at woods-edge. But was this a common field even then? I had not thought about the Nature of this land, and I have discovered little since describing the prior land use, beyond finding mention of it as an abandoned strip mine. I had imagined the typically rolling pasture, field, and forest common to this upland region. However, I immediately noticed upon entering the Memorial grounds that this is long-abandoned coal strip-mined land. Likely stripped prior to days when reclamation laws were enacted at the state and federal levels. I saw rough, unhealed debris piles, pits, ponds, and sparse forest cover. Park Service crews and volunteers will be planting thousands of seedlings… to heal the land and honor Flight 93 victims and their families. So, a Common Field? No, it’s a landscape devastated by strip mining during a period before we recognized the need to establish minimum standards of practice to return stripped acreage to some level of productivity.

I’ve written about eastern Ohio stripped land that has been remediated and returned to some respectable level of productivity: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2019/04/19/mid-march-revelations-on-worn-out-land-2/. At this Memorial the abused land resonates with the emotional devastation wrought by that day’s terror. The irony translates across both types of scarring. Society needed the coal; we mined it, exacting a toll upon the land. Only later did we realize the false economy of extracting in the absence of designed reclamation. An expensive unintended consequence. I appreciate the resonance of our taking intentional steps to heal a physically abused and ruined land… on a site bearing palpable scars of a devastating blow to our national psyche.

I hope at some point the Park Service will infuse some expression of the irony and parallels. Healing and awareness come in multiple dimensions. Caring for our One Earth, this pale blue orb in the vast darkness of space, is as important as anything commanding our societal attention. We must choose to defeat the existential threat of evil terrorism, even as we awaken to stewarding our Common Home, protecting our Earth from ourselves, and ensuring its sustainability. The two interlocking imperatives command coincident attention here at the Flight 93 National Memorial.

The Tower of Voices stands as a spiritual lantern to what happened here, and what may result from those events. The awakening, the healing, the commitment to citizenship and stewardship. I am left humbled, inspired, and recommitted to informed and responsible citizenship and stewardship.

Thoughts and Reflections

Here are the three succinct truths I draw from this Blog Post:

Sometimes Nature and the sweep of human events interact in unexpected ways
Nature can heal… both human and natural wounds
Every place in Nature has a story to tell

Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire and Reward you!

And a Third: I am available for Nature-Inspired Speaking, Writing, and Consulting — contact me at steve.jones.0524@gmail.com

Reminder of my Personal and Professional Purpose, Passion, and Cause

If only more of us viewed our precious environment through the filters I employ. If only my mission and vision could be multiplied untold orders of magnitude:

Mission: Employ writing and speaking to educate, inspire, and enable readers and listeners to understand, appreciate, and enjoy Nature… and accept and practice Earth Stewardship.

Vision:

People of all ages will pay greater attention to and engage more regularly with Nature… and will accept and practice informed and responsible Earth Stewardship.
They will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

Tagline/Motto: Steve (Great Blue Heron) encourages and seeks a better tomorrow through Nature-Inspired Living!

Steve’s Three Books

I write my books, issue my Posts, and speak before various audiences to educate, inspire, and enable readers and listeners to understand, appreciate, and enjoy Nature…and accept and practice Earth Stewardship, and Earth Citizenship!

A Lasting Call for Informed and Responsible Citizenship

A Persistent and Tireless Call for Informed and Responsible Earth Stewardship

All three of my books (Nature Based Leadership; Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading; and co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit, Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits) present compilations of my own (and Dr. Wilhoit’s) rich experiences in Nature. The books are collections of nature stories seeking to inspire deeper relationship with and care for this beautiful Earth. Order any and all from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.